Annotation: "This area of the scroll caught my eye immediately. I will be focusing on it for my annotation: Scroll annotation: This area..." (Annotation)

Annotation: "This area of the scroll caught my eye immediately. I will be focusing on it for my annotation: Scroll annotation: This area..."

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This area of the scroll caught my eye immediately. I will be focusing on it for my annotation:

Scroll annotation:

This area jumped out at me immediately. There is a lot of commotion both on and off shore. Most notably, we can see individuals with a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds on the two boats and the restaurant above. Starting with the restaurant, we observe a few men in large robes and black hats. The headwear that we observe is reminiscent of the black hats with two flaps that Song dynasty officials typically wore. Thus, we can assume that the restaurant is probably on the nicer end as it is populated by the upper class / literati. To the right, we observe what appears to be a server or busboy carrying some food above his head. The way he is dressed is simple and allows us to immediately recognize that he is not among the literati; he dons a regular shirt and sandals. Behind the main restaurant and to the upper right, we can see even more restaurants populated with more upper class robe-wearing men. These small details are what gives the scroll a feeling of immense depth and expansiveness. 

The next interesting element we observe are the boats themselves. In the boat closer to shore, we can see a finely decorated interior with what appear to be tables and seating areas. They also possibly appear to be bedrooms through the windows. We also notice a woman, who is one of the only women we are able to see in this section of the scroll, standing and looking over the side of the boat. This suggests that the boat is most likely a pleasure boat for both tourists and locals. I assume that tourists are most likely the more common customer, as they will be wealthier and be willing to spend more. It is also interesting because on the same boat, we see a woman drying her laundry or perhaps sheets. This suggests that people would actually live full time on the boats themselves.